Author: Victoria Anderson

In 1968, when I was nineteen years old, a new bride, and four months pregnant, I watched Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby. The film opens with an aerial shot of the New York’s Dakota apartment building, with its gabled roof and odd chateau-esque architecture. The accompanying soundtrack is a menacing lullaby, a haunting, directionless “la-la- la-la…” sung in the whispery voice of someone slightly unhinged. When the camera brings us down to street level, we watch a young couple walk through the porte chochère into the building’s courtyard. The cues are there for the taking—the young man and woman have...